This June marks 27 years since 12-year-old Severn Cullis-Suzuki (daughter of David) stunned the crowd at the Rio Earth Summit with her speech urging the adults in the room to get serious about saving the planet.

“I’m only a child,” Cullis-Suzuki told the assembled politicians and bureaucrats, “yet I know if all the money spent on war was spent on ending poverty and finding environmental answers, what a wonderful place this Earth would be!”

Cullis-Suzuki’s age, passion and poise made the speech go viral, which, in the days before the Internet, was actually an accomplishment. And for a time the world paid attention, before moving on to other concerns, like a global recession and the aftermath of the fall of the “Evil Empire.”

Even the “end of history” couldn’t free up enough head space to get the lay population focused on the climate emergency.

Of course, few people were calling it a “climate emergency” at the time.

Climate change matters a lot to a vocal minority, and very little to everyone else. The economy, health care, taxes and immigration all tend to rate higher.

The 1992 Rio Summit was held when the ozone layer was the popular environmental concern; a generation of children had grown up hearing about the pernicious effects of polluting our atmosphere. The good news is chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) were eventually banned and the pressure on the ozone layer gradually eased.

Score one for coordinated global action.

But the world’s climate bureaucrats also had more comprehensive objectives in sight: The Rio Summit produced the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. And Rio begat Kyoto, which begat Copenhagen, which begat Durban, which begat the Paris Accord, the current plan to keep planetary warming to non-lethal levels.

Put differently, the frog of humanity has now been in the pot for 27 years. Canadians have heard about climate change for most of their adult (if not entire) lives. And most have seen little or no change to their daily routine or circumstance because of it.

This is the backdrop to Justin Trudeau’s grand re-election strategy of selling a carbon tax as the ticket to climate nirvana. If being taxed (and rebated) for emissions seems like an implausible solution to an existential crisis, then you’re probably not ticking a Liberal box come October.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford, right, meets with Alberta Premier Jason Kenney at the Ontario Legislature last week. Conservative premiers are deeply unimpressed with carbon taxes.Chris Young /
THE CANADIAN PRESS

Of course, this presumes the environment is a top-level concern for most voters. But here’s the thing: Climate change matters a lot to a vocal minority, and very little to everyone else. The economy, health care, taxes and immigration all tend to rate higher. And it’s easy to see why. If someone is struggling to get by day-to-day, it’s hard to fault them for not thinking much about our collective future, even if that future is under threat.

It gets worse. Even when people say they care about the environment they usually mean they care enough except to actually do anything about it. Witness the multiple homicides of carbon-pricing at the ballot box. Any public policy designed to tackle climate change must recognize that most people are climate NIMBYs.

Nimbyism is actually a massive point in favour of carbon taxes. If you can’t duck them, you might just end up modifying your climate-killing behaviour. And our collective behaviour is what has to change; there will be no government banning of carbon emissions overnight as was the case with CFCs, for which there were viable and immediate alternatives.

Even when people say they care about the environment they usually mean they care enough except to actually do anything about it.

But collective action is tricky enough to mobilize within borders (Hello Doug Ford and Jason Kenney!), let alone across them. Every climate summit since Rio has been a version of “No, you first” between the developed and developing worlds, even if the latter are some of the worst climate offenders.

Canadians might not be informed in enough detail to argue the merits of the various climate proposals, but they do sense that Canada’s contribution won’t matter if countries such as the United States, China and India aren’t pulling in the same direction.

How, then, will Trudeau avoid sounding like a climate hysteric as he tries to build momentum toward the ballot box? Most people have tuned out alarmism, even in the face of extreme weather events. They’d rather hear how much the carbon tax will go up over the coming years, which Trudeau won’t answer.

This misalignment of electoral and planetary imperatives is, in many ways, the grand story of climate change policy. Votes are about the here and now; complex public policy needs to stretch across electoral cycles.

Now Trudeau needs to sell a marquee tax on an issue of low public importance from a point of low personal approval, in the teeth of a sustained revolt against increases to the cost of living. And he must do it after a mandate spent angering and disappointing environmentalists and the resource sector – without bleeding support to progressive alternatives.

Does that sound like a problem you can fix, prime minister?

Andrew MacDougall is a London-based communications consultant and ex-director of communications to former prime minister Stephen Harper.

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